The life and times of the Chief Dental Editor of Dental Products Report magazine and dentistry's "Technology Evangelist". Follow my thoughts and travels as I practice, write, lecture, tinker, and experiment with technology and technology in dentistry.

Tuesday, December 11, 2018

Ultradent Products Inc. announced on November 27, 2018, known nationally as “Giving Tuesday,” that it would donate $10,000 toward a Humanitarian Medical and Dental Education Fund started by the Adams, Gladwell, Durham Foundation based in Salt Lake City, Utah.

The money will go toward providing professional medical and dental education to underserved populations through online lectures and hands-on training provided to students through virtual reality programs. “We’ve basically created online education with hands-on education via virtual reality technology that allows the students to actually perform procedures as if they were on an actual human, in an actual lab, but via technology,” says Dr. Mark Durham, a prosthodontist and co-founder of the Adams, Gladwell, Durham Foundation. He adds, “The challenge on the planet today is that there is progress in some areas and the lack of progress in others which leads to problems for people—humans just like you and I,” adds Durham. “The solution is scaling education. If we can share this information with a lot of people they can start doing things that have never been done before and really create another renaissance, which would be beautiful for humanity. So what we’re doing is investing in systems and technology that we’re developing that allows us to go into areas of the world and deliver education for a fraction of the cost, with some of the best minds.”

The push to provide education in place of services, they believe, could change the world. “It’s teaching them how to fish, per se, instead of just doing the procedure for them,” added Dr. Nathan Adams, an oral surgeon and co-founder of the foundation.

As for their progress toward the goal of educating as many people as possible, Durham reports, “So far, the foundation has built three surgical modules for around $50,000, which can now be shared to any of the 7 billion people on the earth without us charging any of them a penny to download. This year, because we are getting faster at building modules, our team and our local collaborators have a goal to see eight modules built for the same amount of money. Imagine the amount of people that will receive surgical training with the additional eight modules we build together!”

To learn more about this wonderful cause, or to donate, please visit https://www.gofundme.com/smarty.

Ultradent gladly supports hundreds of humanitarian efforts every year, worldwide. This includes donations toward major disaster relief efforts as well as smaller, individually run humanitarian missions. To learn more about Ultradent’s humanitarian efforts, please visit ultradent.com/company/humanitarian.